#Soldiers heroes of world war 2 patch Patch#
Patch loved growing up on the family’s Arizona ranch.īefore ever heading to Tucson, he stumbled across a job in San Leandro, CA at Friden Calculating Machine company. Patch was allowed to stay behind until his graduation, then headed to San Francisco to witness the World’s Fair before his expected matriculation at the University of Arizona in the fall of 1939. When Patch was a senior in high school, his father was forced to sell his interest in the farm. “Collecting eggs, feeding the chickens, carrying slop to the hogs, milking cows and doing all that kinds of stuff.”Ĭurtis anticipated spending the rest of his life on the farm, but the Great Depression, the bank failures that followed, and the impacts of a severe drought combined to alter those plans. “Chopping woods, picking up chips, bringing them in for starting the morning fire,” you’ll hear him recall.
As he got older, the list of this only child’s duties on the ranch continued to expand. The following year, seven-year-old Patch lost his mother, and he and his father moved less than a mile away to live with his grandmother. In 1926, a historic flood wiped out a dam those pioneers had built, setting back the family’s 100 acre farming operation. You’ll hear him discuss his childhood in Arizona on the land his grandfather had homesteaded after being directed there by Mormon leader Brigham Young. For more photos, visit the Hometown Heroes facebook page.